The Phantom Light Overhead
by TheOtterKnight
Summary: Rika had escaped to her closet from all her childhood problems. Paradise was created as a safe haven for everyone. You, though, you were the one she wasn't sure if she wanted to save or trample on. - - - - Another Story AU. Pre-relationship Rika/gender neutral reader.


**Pairing(s):** Pre-relationship Rika/Gender neutral Reader. Minor references to past V/Rika. Referenced Ray/Reader.

 **Warning(s):** Mentions of child abuse and unhealthy relationships, implications of mental instability and abuse of power.

 **Universe:** Another Story.

 **Spoilers:** Another Story. Rika's past.

 **Word Count:** 2,211

 **Prompt:** "I can't wait to go home."

* * *

 **The Phantom Light Overhead**

The slivers of moonlight on the floor marred the smooth expanse. They were like little rivers of pale light, fogged and distant. The haze to it looked otherworldly.

It was no secret that she liked to bathe in the light of the moon, the sun long eclipsed below the line of the horizon. For all her praise of the sun and its powers, she was by default, a child of the night. She has never understood everyone's affinity for the daylight hours, for when the dawn crept in and smothered everything in its heat.

There was always a false sense of security there - the pale hours of the morning fledged hope and blind innocence. A cloudless sky often promised a fruitful future, did it not? People can get sunburned however, though, they can swelter and die beneath the heat of the star. The moon was incapable of its own light and relied on the sun to shine. She needed V as much as she needed the dark eternal cloak of the shadows.

The daylight hours did little to hide the truth - even though things lurked in the dark when the light is at its thinnest, it would be easy to hide and dispose of the truth and the frightening reality of insecurity that cannot be hidden from prying eyes. All her flaws and faults were visible then and it was all she could do to hide away from it all.

Was she the only one who felt this way? Had she been the only one dealt the cruel hand of fate, who had to listen to her parents scream and cry? To be taunted and belittled by her classmates? To be shoved into closets, to hide away from the pain, from the light that did little to hide her bruises or her tears? Rika had grown in that small little room of hers, where the only company was the curls of pure childish fear and anguish that pulsed through her. No one had come for her, not even the teachers who did little to shield her. Not her own aunt who had simply shaken her head at her mother. Everyone had tried to pry her from her closet, her own safe place, and she had kicked and screamed all the way. Even V had bound her wrists and dragged her from it.

There's a sound then, a scuffle that dissipated her thoughts harshly. She mistook it for the sound from her dream of the pullstring light overhead. Instead, she blinked and the walls in her mind faded. She was instead left with the broad walls of the throne room, bright and colourful with cloths of ruby and gold that spilled onto the floor above her chair like waterfalls. The air was still aside from the sounds of her own breathing. Her blood thrummed like molten fire, hot and harsh against her arteries.

The sound echoed again and - _there_ \- her gaze focused on you. _You_ who sat so plainly in the corner there. A dimmed light danced across the underside of your jaw, shadows long and dark through your hair and over your shoulders. The majority of candles in the room had since sputtered out and the darkness blanketed the air. She stared without comprehension and your foot moved, a slow bob to your head before you stiffened and straightened then relaxed and folded unto yourself.

Rika unfolded her fingers, the joints numb and her skin shivered without her taking notice of the cold. She called your name then but you could only nod plainly without response. Her exhale felt like an expulsion of steam from her blood-boiled body but nothing sickly came up, not even when she moved with the grace of a sputtering fire. The strands of light cut across her skin, soothing and calm against her. Her only real ally, even now. She strode across the room, her footfalls baffled by the end threads of her coat. The glow of the light as it fell across everything that she knew to be true - it was up to her to intercept and divine the sordid lies from it.

She stepped up to you, a sleeping person who barely stirred at her approach, even when she had called your name again. Her savior's clothes are heavy atop her dress as if it might smother her. Rika stood there, aware that you had likely not moved since your arrival to the throne room hours ago. The honesty of the matter settled thickly into her bones.

You were a bug beneath her, the one with enough sentience to cower and shield itself from her when she approached. The one who was disgusting to even regard, with a flimsy shell of protection and naive eyes that dared to stare back when she graced them with a look. Ray had chosen _you_ \- he had become a moth to your inner light - the same light that threatened to snuff him out and choke her. You were feral with your sincerity and kindness but reckless towards yourself. Rika's fingers clenched at the hem of her coat and the anger misdirected towards you festered.

Rika knew of your insignificance here, knew how little you mattered outside your title of Special Missionary. You were born to be weak, to be stepped on by the stronger as they climbed up the ladder to infinity. You were meant to be crushed underfoot, to be shoved aside and slotted away like a dusty unused toy after you broke. You weren't meant to be loved, you were meant to be _molded._

Just like she had been.

Rika unfisted her hands and the fabric fell loose, untucked past the palms and just long enough to cradle her fingers. Some part of her hated you so strongly that it reared its ugly head at the pit of her stomach to the point that her gut felt unsettled at the mere sight of you. It fumbled and churned, messy and fluid and hard to contain. This wasn't her, this directionless anger, but the more she saw you trot down the halls with Ray at your heels, the easier she could pinpoint it.

She hated how easily she had been tossed away, so carelessly. She had wanted a Paradise where nobody would be hurt, where peace would be forced to compensate for the damnable silence that had traumatized her youth. Mint Eye was forced to understand each other because it wouldn't happen otherwise, not in the world in which everyone lived. Nobody had understood _her,_ nobody had even _tried._ Everybody only saw the surface and if your scars weren't there they simply didn't exist.

V had smothered her, had tried to pull her from her zone of comfort and forced her into the light. Even after she had escaped her closet in her youth, she had built a new one every time she needed to. Rika would close her eyes and it was there, her only comfort and friend when everyone's words and hands had made her bleed. It had been full of the only comforts she had known and V had shattered it all. Then he had killed her in ever sense of the word except the action when he had spun the story of her death.

Her friends, the RFA - he had closed the door between them and her and taken the doorknob with him. It was all she could do to bulldoze it down and try to pull them through. Ray had been there - but he had obeyed her every word. He was still worlds away, still mentally chained to the house that his brother and mother had left him in. Rika tried - she tried to teach him how to break himself free, had attempted it herself and yet ... He was too far away ...

Not everybody could be saved but she yearned to try. She would save everyone that she could - just because she had never been saved did not mean that _they_ couldn't be. Did _you_ want to be? Ray had said you had devoted yourself to RFA, but the messages that she had glimpsed on the phone for him ... she couldn't be certain. Whether it had been Ray or someone else who you held dear, even now. V could have skewed your view, seduced you to his overwhelming light. Rika had been hardened by her youth, though, had been subjected to wounds and barely escaped with her life. What fate would befall you?

 _You,_ who looked so much like a child in this moment? So finitely small, minuscule beneath her full height, shoulders hunched together and knees folded to your chest. The slow, steady sound of your exhales without lapse. A defenceless child, already filled with so much trust towards her because why else would you sleep so tranquilly in her presence otherwise? Why else would you have sought her out time and time again and make the conscious choice to tuck yourself against the wall while she tended to the questions and faults of her believers?

You had rarely interfered with Rika's work, barely pressed her with childish or idiotic questions. The answers you sought were given - not just because you had asked but because there had been genuine curiosity there. That alone had smoothed the edges of the hammer-blows behind each word you uttered. You are by no means docile, but neither are you reckless.

Perhaps the reason why Rika had hated you so was not because you had replaced her, but perhaps you were the echo of her youth, the child who had found solace in the closet after she had been condemned to it. There has always been pain in that knowledge, that the haven that she so readily believed to be her haven had been her prison for so long. That it still trapped her, even now. Had V even pulled her out? Or had she pulled him in and shunned him for the flashlight he brought to scope his way through the darkness?

Had you simply hidden yourself away, away from the truths and the hardships of the world like she had done? Is that why you took Ray's hand and blindly trusted him, trusted his _innocence?_ Was any comfort better than none, from a complete stranger? Is that why you stayed? Or had she forced it upon you, forced that trust and companionship through bribery and falsehoods? Had she only pressed her hands through the cracks and dragged you into her own room of darkness, shielded from everyone else? Did she simply only see what she wanted to?

Her outer robe fell easily away from her body, slid from the phantom bruises that had faded long ago. The aches from her past never went away and had burned and blemished her. It was back when she had foolishly followed those who should have known better. How stupid of her to believe that those people would have saved her.

She would save you, though. That was her full intention, and as her saviour's clothes fell across you, a shield — _a closet door_ — against the world, she knew she could very well die trying.

Rika's back slid against the wall beside you, her fingernails clipped against the screen of your cellphone as she set it away from you, safe from any potential of flailed limbs. She knew little of your history, but it was enough for her to see the truth even within the dark: that you could be saved, that redemption could be brought to any and all within the RFA. In the meantime, though ...

Her eyes slid towards the meek and unassuming lines of silver in the middle of the room as it danced upon the floorboards. Her eyes closed and her hand settled along your wrist, fingers tangled along your pulse. For a moment, she was a child alongside you, at war with the world. Her mind's walls crept back in and she is seven, dress tangled with her ankles and tears wet in her eyes but dry on her cheeks. In her mind, she was not alone this time.

Yes, in the meantime, she would figure out whose room the two of you were in - because now you sat curled up with her in her closet - whose safe haven built from lies and suffering and self-shielding. Was it her closet, both broken and patched and made of quilted lines of puzzle piece dreams? Or yours, completely separate and foreign to her touch, to her mind and to her questions? She was the Saviour, the Keeper of Truths. She could not answer the question of who was in the attempt of saving whom, but she supposed that when the answer came, it would suffice for the other question as well - of whose room she imagined now for comfort. Wherever they chose to shield themselves from, wherever they found solace — the sliver of light that slid through the crack of the door ... was that the door as it closed upon them, or had it been the moment she had started to push it open?


End file.
